FRAUD

This came in from the news wire


Sunnis, Secular Shiites Unite on Election

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Sunni Arab and secular political groups joined forces Wednesday to decide whether to call for a repeat of parliamentary elections that gave the Shiite religious bloc a larger than expected lead.
The main Sunni coalition has said the elections were tainted by fraud, including voting centers failing to open, shortages in election materials, reports of multiple voting and forgery.
The election commission, known as the IECI, has said it received 1,250 complaints about violations during the Dec. 15 elections, 25 of which it described as serious. But the commission says it does not expect the complaints will change the overall result, to be announced in January.
U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said ``there have been a number of complaints lodged with IECI, and their track record on following up on these things have been pretty good.''
The election commission's initial assessment ``was there no complaints or incidents that they found that would fall into the most severe category that would throw into question the results of the election,'' McCormack said. ``The IECI is going to work through these complaints and we'll see what they come up with.''
The agreement to join forces over registering complaints was reached at a meeting in the offices of a secular bloc headed by former Shiite Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, a U.S. favorite.
``We decided to form an operations room to collect the complaints from all the affected parties and present them to the Iraqi Electoral Commission'' and international organizations such as the U.N., said Naseer al-Ani of the Sunni Arab Iraqi Islamic Party.
He added that ``rerunning the elections was presented by some parties at today's meeting but they were only ideas.''
The bitter climate has raised questions about U.S. hopes that the election would lead to a more inclusive government involving Sunni Arabs, the minority group that formed the core of Saddam Hussein's government and is now the backbone of the insurgency.
Sporadic violence across the country killed 15 people Wednesday, nearly all of them Iraqi police or army soldiers.
In Baghdad's Green Zone, more than 50 representatives of Sunni Arab political groups met in the offices of Allawi's Iraqi National List.
The parties will meet again Thursday for further discussion, according to al-Ani and others who attended the meeting. The Iraqi Islamic Party is one of the three main partners in the Iraqi Accordance Front headed by Adnan al-Dulaimi.
A senior official in the Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, Hasan al-Rubaiei, said the groups were complaining because they were not doing as well as they expected at the polls.
``Yes, there were complaints from all the political groups that may be right or may be wrong. But these complaints do not change the reality,'' al-Rubaiei said. ``They expected to get a higher number of votes but it did not happen. They are going too far.''
But al-Ani said the election commission was ``not able to fulfill its mission.''
``There was tremendous fraud, and it didn't do what it has to do,'' he said.
Their complaints have focused mainly on Baghdad, Iraq's largest electoral district and one which has large numbers of both Shiites and Sunnis. Preliminary results show the Shiite religious bloc with a commanding lead in the capital.